


Talk, Baby, Talk

by lyonet



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern: Still Have Powers, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Getting Back Together, M/M, Past implied/referenced abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-04-16 05:33:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14157885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyonet/pseuds/lyonet
Summary: “Enough,” Erik said furiously. “It’s over. Let it die.”“Be fair, sugar,” Emma said. “We made good music. It was your choice to wear magenta armour and a cape.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the Emma Louise song of the same name.

“Enough,” Erik said furiously. “It’s over. Let it die.”

“Be fair, sugar,” Emma said. “We made good music. It was _your_ choice to wear magenta armour and a cape.”

Erik took the high ground and did not remind her of the concert she had performed in her underwear because she had taken a sudden savage dislike to The Brotherhood’s stylist and refused to wear any of the provided costumes. “The band broke up ten years ago,” he snapped. “We’re irrelevant. There’s no need to get sentimental about it now.”

Emma gave him her most scornful look. “Sentimental? Really? Erik, they are playing our songs at protest rallies. They are putting our faces on placards. There is money to be made here.”

The problem with possessing a strong streak of fatalism was the inescapable need to know whether you were right and everything was as terrible as you thought it was. Erik had suspected an ambush when Emma asked him to come along for a ‘nice night out with old friends’ - Emma did not undertake social interaction without an ulterior motive – but here he was anyway, sitting in a bar with Emma and Azazel and too much alcohol, getting angry enough to make the steel table legs vibrate. Just like old times.

Only, not quite. Charles was not here to talk him down. Raven wasn’t here to back him up. It was possible Emma had not bothered asking Raven to come; their whole time together in the band, Emma and Raven had always either been in the middle of a feud or on the brink of starting a new one, and after the chain reaction of relationship meltdowns that had led to the Brotherhood’s very public implosion, Raven had cut contact with the rest of the band. Erik had been very tempted to do the same, but Azazel was the one person from that part of his life who he had managed not to alienate and staying friends with Azazel meant occasionally seeing Emma. Which meant being subjected to the occasional underhanded scheme.

“If you want to cash in on the global rise of fascism,” Erik snarled, “don’t expect me to help.”

“So melodramatic,” Emma sighed. “Here’s a tip, Erik, screaming about social injustice sounds better with bass in the background. People actually listen then. You could donate your share of the proceeds to charity or something else appropriately martyr-like.”

The light fixture above their table started to flicker. “‘A nice night out with old friends’,” Azazel parroted sadly, rescuing his drink from the shuddering table.

In the old days, when Erik had indeed worn magenta armour and a cape and screamed about social injustice to a stadium audience, he would have stuck this fight out to the bitter end, that being when security figured out why everything metal had turned into a projectile weapon and kicked the band out. MAGNET(O) FOR TROUBLE had been a weekend headline enough times that Charles had started cutting the stories out for a scrapbook and Raven had phoned in to the papers to offer them better puns.

But that was ten years past. Erik had grown up. He had a marriage and a divorce under his belt, and had joint custody of a three-year-old. He’d given up smoking, and had eventually got out of the habit of blowing things up when he lost his temper.

Though he would murder for a cigarette right now. Emma had that effect on him.

He grabbed his jacket off the back of his chair. “Go fuck yourself, Emma,” he said evenly.

“I have toy-boys for that kind of thing, darling,” Emma drawled, “but thanks anyway.”

“So good to catch up with friends,” Azazel said gloomily, and went to buy another drink.

Erik fumed all the way home. He had left Nina with his neighbour Angel, as usual, and he walked through the door to the middle of a Disney marathon. “I told you I don’t want her watching that crap,” he said, exasperated. “It’s exploitative, commercialist, mutant-baiting – ”

“ _You’re welcome, you’re welcome, you’re welcome,_ ” Angel sang, drowning him out. Nina was slumped into her side, fast asleep and sucking on the dorsal fin of her shark plushie. 

Erik felt the tension ease out of his shoulders, the relief of being home enough to drive away the worst of his bad mood. The apartment was filled with soothingly familiar metal – steel appliances in the kitchen that hummed with quiet purpose, the peaceful resonance of the frames of his bed and Nina’s in the room beside it, the complex notes of the workshop where Erik messed around with his pet prototypes and presents for his daughter, who already had an embarrassment of toys, most of them currently spread out on the rug. Erik crooked a finger and little metal animals zoomed out from a hundred unexpected crevices, piling neatly into their box. The magnetic blocks locked together into a grid.

“How was her night?” he asked, leaning over the couch. Nina was in her pyjamas and the inescapable bunny slippers that were so worn out by now that Erik was plotting a variety of ways to replace them without triggering a complete meltdown.

“Teeth brushed, hair brushed, chocolate ice cream for dinner,” Angel reeled off. She grinned at Erik’s sharp look. “Actually I went out on a limb and microwaved the Tupperware in the fridge that was dated today and labelled ‘Nina’s dinner’ in capital letters. Chill out, Erik.”

“She only gets to develop good teeth once,” Erik said defensively. Angel was one of the very few people in the world allowed to be alone with his daughter, which was about the highest level of trust Erik had to offer, but he tended to lose his sense of perspective where Nina was concerned.

When he scooped her into his arms, she stirred, giving a sleepy protest of “Moaaana!”. She fell back to sleep straight away once he tucked her in. Maybe the drugging effects of Disney were worth it; usually it took at least three storybooks and half a dozen songs to get her settled, to the point that Erik kept a guitar in her wardrobe for lullabies. He lingered beside the bed, smoothing the fringe off her forehead. Her hair was getting so long, it made her look like a mini Magda. He should take more photos, freeze the moment before it got away from him.

The television was off when he came back into the living area. “Drinks didn’t go well, I guess,” Angel remarked.  She was in the kitchen, rinsing out her coffee mug, tote bag already slung over her shoulder.  “I wasn’t expecting you home until, like, ten at the earliest. You’re supposed to be hanging out with your rockstar buddies, doing glamorous shit.”

Erik scowled. “There’s a reason the band broke up, Angel. We can’t stand each other.”

“You are a really disappointing mutant icon to live next door to,” Angel informed him, not for the first time. “You’re lucky your daughter’s so cute.”

Erik was lucky that he had Angel around and he knew it. The first time he had met her, she was trying to kick a very recently ex-boyfriend out her apartment and Erik had resolved the situation by explaining that unless the swearing outside his door stopped immediately, nobody was going to get the TV because he would make it explode. The second time they had met, she was very drunk at a party and trying to impress a boy by showing him a pole  dancing routine that he was incapable of appreciating for the art it was. Erik, though, had been captivated by how she handled the metal, her perfect sense of balance, and  by the end of the night she’d talking him into having a go.

She had not sold the footage to any news outlets, and they had been friends ever since.

“For tonight’s babysitting, you owe me a lift to campus tomorrow,” Angel added, on her way out the door. “I’ve got a class at eight.”

“Okay, “ Erik agreed reluctantly. He hated the parking around the university, but at least there, surrounded by teenagers and twenty-somethings, he was unlikely to be beset by other people’s nostalgia. While The Brotherhood _had_ been a big deal in the mutant community once, it had been nearly eleven years since the release of their last album. The world had changed. _Erik_ had changed. 

The last thing he wanted to do was look back.

*

The new office was big and lined with bookshelves with a charming view out onto green lawns. The desk was roughly the size of a bed. “I feel like a trophy professor,” Charles said, awed despite himself. “Do I have to give blowjobs as well as lectures?”

“At least they picked a man who’s up for the challenge,” his sister replied with cheerful spite. She carried in Charles’ last two boxes from the car and dumped them on the desk. “Have fun unpacking all this junk that we both know you don’t really need.”

“Oh, it can wait,” Charles said hastily. “Let’s have lunch.”

He sent a speculative tendril into the hum of minds around him, scanning lightly for impressions of good food. “Apparently that cafe with the atrociously spelled menu does excellent sandwiches,” he told Raven. “Shall we?”

“You are so creepy sometimes,” she said, without any particular bite. “Okay, sandwiches, but you’re paying.”

It was a beautiful morning. Charles’ scarf and jacket were quite unnecessary in the unseasonably warm sunshine, but the first red leaves of fall crunched satisfyingly under his wheels as he rolled along the footpath at a leisurely pace. Raven amused herself by mirroring the clothes and hairstyles of random passersby, which caused more than a few double-takes when the mimicry was noticed. One girl, whose extensive and intricate wing tattoos were made visible by the backless shirt she wore, stopped and stared at her sudden doppelganger, and Charles heard in her head a whisper of  _Mystique? Seriously?_

“Raven,” Charles said warningly.

“Oh, what.” Raven frowned at him. “I’m not hurting anyone.”

“I’d tone it down if you don’t want to spend the next hour signing autographs.”

“I’m not the only shapeshifter in the state,” Raven grumbled, but she slipped back into default blonde the rest of the way to the cafe. She hated getting recognised by fans of The Brotherhood. 

It happened to Charles sometimes too, but people were not usually so willing to come up and talk to him about it. There was not really a tactful way to ask ‘aren’t you that rich Xavier kid who used to sleep with Magneto? Didn’t he break up the band over you?’ Not that it was true. The powder keg of personalities that had made The Brotherhood’s music so electric had been the real cause of the band’s inevitable end – the collapse of Charles’ and Erik’s relationship had only sped things up a little – but to the diehards, Charles knew he was the mutant Yoko Ono. He could do without one of those encounters on his first day at work.

Raven was uncharacteristically quiet as they settled at a table eat. Her phone chirped with two incoming texts that she pointedly ignored. Charles let her brood for a bit while he appreciated the excellence of his rocket and haloumi wrap. When she ignored the third text, he caved. Charles had never been very good at managing his curiosity.

“Are you going to tell me?” he asked plaintively. “It’s not fair to make me guess.”

Normally that would be Raven’s cue to rap out a sarcastic retort, but this time she just made an indecisive face and pushed her phone across the table at him. Beginning to feel concerned, Charles opened the chain of texts. “Oh,” he said, when he saw the name attached to them. “I didn’t realise you were talking to Emma these days.”

“I’m not,” Raven snapped. “I don’t know how she got my number, stole it out of someone’s brain probably. She texted me a couple of days ago, saying she wanted to ‘catch up’ - obviously I said no, but she does not take a hint.”

“Same Emma as always,” Charles murmured. “Was anyone else invited?”

“What do you think?” Raven reclaimed her phone. “It doesn’t make any difference. I’m not going.”

“Raven, if this is about me – ”

“Of course it’s not about you.” Her tone was prickly enough to give lie to the words, but also too determined to argue with. “The band was good while it lasted. Then it stopped being good and became an unholy firestorm. I’m well out of that.” She gave him a fierce look. “So are you.”

Charles wanted to say something easy and wry to make the awkwardness of the moment go away, but Erik was having the effect he’d always had, even in physical absentia, and screwing everything up. He put down what was left of his sandwich and drank some mediocre tea.

Raven tapped at her phone with unnecessary force. “I’m telling her no again.”

Charles forced a smile. “That’s the spirit.”

They split up after lunch, Raven returning to her car for the drive across the city to her place, Charles heading to give his first lecture on mutant history. He’d come to visit the campus a month ago when he was still considering the university’s offer and the good wheelchair access had been what tipped his answer from ‘probably’ to ‘yes’. This was all part of the private project that he told Raven was a ten year plan and was in fact more akin to a personal manifesto. The move was the perfect opportunity to reinvent himself a little. No more putting up with a  largely inaccessible campus; no more being the resident pushover in an unappreciative faculty. Definitely no more making empty chit-chat on dates because he could tell from the first that they were completely incompatible but he was too polite to leave. New Charles would say no to things. New Charles stood up for himself.

New Charles got lost twice and was late his own lecture, but it was a  _start_ .

*

Erik was a freelance consultant. What that meant, in practice, was that he got called in for the projects that were too ambitious or unwieldy or flat out weird for humans to handle, and he got paid so well for it that he could pick and choose which ones interested him. At the beginning of the year he’d been contracted for fiddly, experimental work with NASA while Magda looked after Nina. They’d arranged for their schedules to co-ordinate long enough to get together at Passover, which had taken a lot of doing. Now, while Magda was busy filming a documentary about institutional mutantphobia in Poland, Erik was the one scheduling Skype dates, fishing dinosaurs out from between the couch cushions and convincing Nina not to wear her bunny slippers outside. It was heaven.

Erik had met Magda exactly at the moment he needed to meet her most. He had loved her like a man clinging on to a lifebuoy – when he was with her, he could remember how to breathe. He was not sure what she had seen in him, a former rockstar still firmly in the burning stage of crash and burn, clearly on a wild rebound and suffering nicotine withdrawal to boot, the lawyers from Shaw Records still hammering on his door. “Why didn’t you run in the opposite direction?” Erik had asked her once, wonderingly. Magda had laughed. “I’d never find out anything interesting if I did that,” she had told him, and that was that. Neither of them were big fans of the institution of marriage, but then Magda had fallen pregnant. There were too many horror stories out there about mutants in the family law courts for Erik to turn his nose up at any legal rights he could claim over his child, especially with Magda’s toxic parents waiting in the wings, so steel wedding bands and a pile of paperwork it was.

In the end, the divorce was almost amicable. Living with Erik was exhausting – he understood this. No one had ever been able to manage it for long. The co-parenting arrangement was astonishingly functional, considering how rarely all three of them were in the same city.Nonetheless, there was a quietly growling, possessive part of Erik that could only be quieted by having Nina in his sight, within his reach. When they left the apartment, he carried her as much as she would let him, sitting on his hip or his shoulders. He gave her his mother’s locket to wear, a piece of metal so well-known to him that he could trace it from miles away.

As his only work at present were his own projects, this was a holiday of sorts for the two of them. They went to the zoo and the aquarium, and kidnapped Azazel and Angel for a picnic at the park. Nina insisted on patting every dog she saw and was so enthusiastic in her crumb-scattering that she was soon surrounded by a flock of voracious pigeons.

“Papa, Papa,” she shouted excitedly, “look at my birdies!”

“Your child is being devoured by pigeons,” Azazel observed with mild concern.

“Bullshit, she will rule the birds with bread and circuses and be crowned as their empress,” Angel said lazily.

“Never let her watch _Bambi,_ ” Erik warned her. “I mean it.”

“How about _Mary Poppins_? ‘Tuppence a bag, tuppence a bag’…”

“I am very glad to say I don’t know what you’re talking about, and the answer is no.”

A woman walked past with her dog; the vague smile on her face froze when she saw Azazel’s red, scarred skin. Angel’s laziness dropped instantly away; her shoulders tensed, ready for flight, while the metal cutlery trembled slightly in the picnic basket. The woman moved on hurriedly. It was the kind of thing that happened pretty much every time Azazel went out in public, hardly even noteworthy except as another reason that humanity was generally awful.

Angel’s shoulders were still tight. She shook herself abruptly, dropping her jacket to release the iridescent span of her wings. “Joyride,” she said to Erik and went to grab Nina, who screamed joyfully as they shot skyward.

Maybe someday Nina would have wings of her own. Or, Erik thought wistfully, maybe she would be able to fly as he did, levitating on the magnetic fields of the earth. The X gene was so unpredictable, there was no way of guessing what powers Nina might eventually have, if she had any at all. While Magda sometimes joked that the Lehnsherr temper would come out when Nina hit her teens, they were avoiding any conversation about what other genes Erik might have passed on.

The odds were high that Nina would be a mutant. Still, nothing was certain. Magda was very open-minded for a human – she had married  _Erik_ , after all, for however short a time – but Erik had known enough families who fell apart post-mutation that he  couldn’t help having doubts. Look at Angel. When her mutation had first presented, at age sixteen, she had immediately left home and never gone back, because hers was not the kind of town you stayed in if you had a physical mutation. Azazel’s mother had named him after a demon, which said all that was necessary about her  subsequent  parenting. Erik couldn’t help wondering if Magda was hoping that her daughter would be human, almost as often as he wondered what he would do if Nina  _was_ human. 

He watched Angel loop easily through the sky with Nina shrieking excitedly in her arms. It wouldn’t change anything, he told himself, and hoped it was true. 

It was at times like this that Erik inevitably wondered what Charles would say, and had to grit his teeth against the little tired stab of pain that came with  knowing that Charles would not say anything, because they had not been on speaking terms in just under a decade. The years when Erik heard Charles’ opinion on anything and everything – when the idea of going a day without talking to him was ludicrous and offensive – had left a habit so deeply ingrained that Erik would probably still be running big decisions by his mental version of Charles when he was eighty.

Charles would adore Nina. Erik had absolutely no doubt of that. Charles wouldn’t care if she was human or mutant, the thought of either being a problem would probably not even occur to him, because he was good in ways Erik would never be, and the thought was a gateway to such teeth-grinding misery that Erik tried to avoid  ever indulging it at all, at the risk of popping lightbulbs and levitating tables.

“I think you should talk to Emma,” Azazel said, with a suddenness that implied he’d been thinking it for a while and just got up the nerve to say it out loud.

“I think I should block Emma from all aspects of my life,” Erik replied conversationally. “But please explain your thing.”

“Would it be so bad?” Azazel ran a hand down the scarred side of his face. “They were good days. We made good music. We could make more good music now. You still play – I still play.”

“Emma still plays mind games with everyone,” Erik pointed out. “And Raven isn’t coming back. We wouldn’t have made it anywhere without Raven, and we wouldn’t make it without her now. Assuming, of course, that I want to play again, which I do not, or that there will be an audience ready and waiting for whatever we’ve got to say, which I doubt.”

Azazel looked away. He had never quite got over his break-up with Raven. Erik refused to be sympathetic or in any way actually acknowledge those feelings;  that might encourage Azazel to talk to him about Charles. 

“Emma is not wrong,” Azazel said, after a moment. “You must have seen the pictures? The young ones write your name on walls. _Magneto was right._ They show that clip, from the rally – you standing on the car, catching bullets with your bare hands. No one has taken your place, Erik. They want you. Maybe they need you.” He paused. “And Emma does not like hearing ‘no’.”

Erik smiled unpleasantly. “But I like saying it to her so much.”

Azazel  frowned. Before he could say anything more,  Angel landed heavily in front of them, dropping Nina unceremoniously in Erik’s lap. Both of them were breathless with laughter and trying to tell him what was so funny. Nina pulled herself upright by the collar of  Erik’s shirt and said excitedly, “We looped the whoop!” Angel gave a fresh scream of laughter, like she was Nina’s age instead of a dignified twenty-five-year-old. Erik squinted up at them doubtfully through his sunglasses. Nina pulled them off his face and put them on herself.

“I have to go,” Angel announced, grabbing her jacket and her bag. “There’s a bachelorette night at the studio tonight, wish me luck coping with drunk white people falling off the pole.”

“Call me if you want someone kicked out,” Erik ordered. He had done it before. 

Angel rolled her eyes, which was not a no, kissed Nina goodbye and headed for the subway.  Azazel unfolded himself from the picnic blanket. “I must also be going,” he told Erik. “Will you wait a little before you say no again? Emma has many ideas. You might like them.”

“I am sure I will not,” Erik said civilly. “Travel safe, Az.”

Azazel bowed formally to Nina to make her laugh and vanished on the spot. A couple on a nearby bench  looked at the space where he had been  and muttered to each other. They might be saying anything; they might not be mutantphobes at all.  It made Erik’s hands curl inward anyway. He had once channelled this constant simmering frustration into songs, into the man on stage who howled for justice with Emma’s bass in the background, daring the world to resent him, daring the world to be afraid. He had held his scars up high and his chin higher, too young and bitter for any kind of compromise.

Until Charles, of course. It was one of the defining pivots of Erik’s life – before Charles and after Charles. Before Magda and after Magda. Before Nina and after Nina. The people Erik loved fiercely enough to change his mind for. There had not been many of them. He would add his mother to the list, but he had only a few memories of her, blurry and jealously guarded. Edie would have adored Nina too,  and t hat was something Erik refused to ever think about, because he would do much worse things than break a lightbulb if he did and Charles was nowhere around to stop him.


	2. Chapter 2

BROTHERLY LOVE: WHAT’S IN THE WORKS FOR THESE MUTANT ICONS?

Charles looked at his newspaper with a vague sense of betrayal. He did not have an actual paper delivered to his door every day so that a headline like that could come into his home and ambush him at the breakfast table. Instead of turning the page, though, Charles found himself staring at the photos splashed across the front page. They were not particularly good photos, taken surreptitiously in a dimly lit bar, but Charles recognised each face instantly. Emma was looking good, unsurprisingly, her blonde hair pulled into a French twist, wearing a little white dress and sipping on a martini like the Bond girl all Bond girls aspired to be, while secretly being the Bond villain. Azazel, doomed to the role of henchman by staying friends with her, was covering most of his face with his hands. Erik -

He was facing Emma. Wearing a leather jacket, like he used to in the old days. His back was very straight. Erik had always had posture that a ballerina would envy. Charles’ eyes traced the edge of cheekbone visible, then, with an effort, turned the page and focused all his attention on an article about hockey player shenanigans.

Then he flipped the page back and stared at Erik some more.

Then he called Raven.

“I don’t know!” Raven yelled at him the second she picked up the phone. Charles held it away from his ear, blinking. The little silence was enough for Raven to take a deep breath and calm down a fraction. “People have been calling me for bloody hours,” she complained. “It’s all Emma this and Erik that…” Another silence. They generally did not say Erik’s name out loud, as if he might spontaneously develop telepathy and overhear them.

“I don’t know what they’re up to,” Raven concluded. “It’s nothing to do with me.”

Charles resisted poking that comment with all the brotherly forbearance he could muster. “All right,” he agreed. He was still staring at the newspaper, trying to decipher the tilt of Erik’s head, the angle of his arms, the tense line of his shoulders. He had once been so good at understanding Erik, but that had been a long time ago.

He wheeled resolutely away from the table, leaving the newspaper behind.

Leaving its speculation behind was more difficult. As he entered his first lecture of the day, he felt a hum of thoughts turning toward him – some absently aware of him but focused elsewhere, others nervous or hopeful or bored, all the usual reactions, and on top of that, sparks of sharp curiosity. _Are they really? Does he know? Did they….will they…Frost, Azazel, Mystique,_ _ **Magneto**_ _._

It was Charles’ turn to take a deep breath. He would get through today, and the silly buzz would blow over.

It would be easier if the strongest curiosity was not coming from a group of his most promising students, the ones who always sat together at the front of the room and asked questions every opportunity they  got . Jean Grey was an astonishing ly gifted young telepath juggling a double major in Mutant Studies and Biology; on one side was her best friend Ororo, wearing of all things a vintage Brotherhood shirt  underneath her denim jacket , and on the other was  Jean’s boyfriend Scott, who had just come to Charles’ defence in a frankly toxic Twitter thread and was feeling guiltily proud of himself. Charles could already tell this day was going to end in a migraine.

What difference would it make to his life, anyway, if the Brotherhood did get back together? If Raven changed her mind, and the four of them became friends again? Charles was not going to get involved. He knew better now. He hardly even cared.

He actually believed it all morning, until a freshman checked her phone just before lunch and found out Sebastian fucking Shaw had waded into the whole spectacle, and then Charles just wanted to _scream_.

*

SHAW SPEAKS OUT: “WE ARE THE CHILDREN OF THE ATOM, BREAK US APART AND THAT ONLY MAKES US STRONGER”.

One day Erik was going to kill Sebastian Shaw. Today might be that day.

Unfortunately he just didn’t have the time this morning because he had to get Nina to swimming class, but he brooded so viciously on the way there that the wheels of the car did not quite touch the ground until he parked outside the aquatic centre. “Papa,” Nina said, pulling against her seatbelt. “Papa, get up, I want to swim.” So Erik pulled himself together, shelved a lifelong hatred and managed not to yell at any of the other parents over the course of an hour, which took a monumental effort.

He arrived home to a gaggle of photographers on the doorstep.

“Erik!” someone yelled. “Is the band really getting back together?”

“What do you have to say to Sebastian Shaw in the light of his recent support?”

“Is it true you’re in a secret relationship with Emma Frost?”

“In the light of Charles Xavier’s latest article on mutant rights – ”

Erik got his daughter out of the car and shoved through the photographers in stony silence. He almost made it to the door without incident. Then a flash went off right in Nina’s face and she recoiled in Erik’s arms, confused and scared, hiding her face in his neck. Erik whirled around long enough to give a middle finger to the whole predatory circle before stalking inside, leaving lumps of twisted metal where cameras used to be.

*

The problem was, nothing had ever really _replaced_ the Brotherhood. There had been plenty of bands who tried to copy the golden formula, but without much success. Despite, in fact maybe because of, the passionate controversy they had inspired with their unapologetic radicalism, the Brotherhood were still somehow the benchmark that no one else could quite reach. There were uncomfortable parallels to be made to Charles’ love life, parallels he was quite determinedly not making.

He went out for drinks with a few of his colleagues after work, this apparently being a Friday ritual in the history department. Professor Moira McTaggert, who taught archaeology and had the thought processes of a trained soldier, bought the first round and by the time it was Charles’ turn to get drinks, she was belting out a Shania Twain song from the karaoke machine. That left Professor Stryker and Doctor Howlett at their table, a pair who not so cordially loathed each other, so Charles murmured a noncomittal excuse about it really getting rather late and went to the bar for one last drink before heading home. He was aware that he was drinking a bit more than he ought to – alcohol had always been his first crutch in times of crisis – but there were not so many outlets that worked reliably for a telepath. Most medication, for instance, wouldn’t put a dent in one of Charles’ headaches. His favourite way to lose himself had always been in very good sex, only…well, not to put too fine a point on it, it had been a while. Bloody benchmarks.

“Charles!” Moira cried, descending on him while he was still finishing off his last whiskey. “Are you coming tomorrow? You are, right?”

“Ah,” Charles said, skimming her thoughts for whatever it was she thought he already knew about. Oh, the student markets. He had seen a few posters around for them. It was a quarterly fundraiser for various student organisations, all very worthy, the sort of thing Charles would gladly support if he was not confident of a hangover in the morning. “Well, you see, it sounds marvellous – ”

“I guess I’ll see you there, then,” Moira said cheerfully, patting Charles on the back. “The students are going to be so happy to have you there, you’re kind of a celebrity.”

Charles tensed. He could see what she _meant_ – the Xavier heir, rich and famous in his own right, a well-known mutant rights activist and noted academic – but celebrity had never been particularly good to Charles or to anyone he cared about. He was very glad to get out of the bar. It was a pleasant evening, enough chill to the air to clear his head a little, and he decided not to bother getting a taxi. It wasn’t all that far to his house, and it was not as if Charles had anything to worry about from dark city streets.

It was a night like this one when he had found a furious boy thrashing against the overpowering current of an icy river, not fighting for his life but fighting to pull one tiny piece of metal from the water. Erik’s fine control had been terrible at the time. It was big, terrifying stunts he had always been best at. Charles remembered dipping into that mind for the first time and diving into the river – he remembered nothing in between, as if to know Erik was to fall.

He remembered Erik emerging from the water, wet hair clinging to his scalp, teeth bared in fury, only to rear back in confusion at the sight of Charles. _Calm your mind!_ Charles had commanded frantically, half-sure Erik would disappear into the blackness and be gone for good. And somehow, Erik had calmed, more out of shock than anything else. He had reached out one last time and this time the locket had returned to his hand as easily as a beloved pet to its master.

But it was Charles Erik had looked at.

Charles rolled on alone through the quiet shady streets around the university.  He was a couple of streets away from home when his phone rang and Emma Frost’s name appeared on the screen. Charles stopped dead, staring. There was literally no good reason he could think of for Emma to call him, but he could imagine an awful lot of bad ones. He was in two minds about whether to pick up, but his wretched curiosity won out in the end. He had to know why.

“Hello, Charles,” Emma said in the pitch-perfect voice he still knew very well. “I hope I’m not calling at a bad time.”

“Not at all. How are you, Emma? Keeping well, I hope.”

“Very,” Emma said, and Charles could imagine the little smile. “Darling, it’s been too long. With everything that’s going on, I think we ought to catch up. There’s so much to talk about.”

“Is there really?”

“Oh, yes,” Emma said serenely. “Let’s do drinks. How about tomorrow?”

It felt as if they were both reading from a script. Charles said sarcastically, “Should my people call your people, Emma?”

She dropped the society charm  with an impatient sound . “I want to talk to you about Erik.”

It actually took the wind out of him. He was left gaping stupidly with the phone pressed against his ear.  It seemed Emma could still get one over him as effortlessly as she had when she was a polished model with killer heels and an untouchable mind and Charles was a transparent mess trailing in Erik and Raven’s wake.

“This is important, Charles,” Emma said. She paused. “It might come better from you.”

“Oh my God,” Charles said faintly. “Goodbye, Emma.”

He ended the call and turned off his phone for good measure. He wished desperately that he could turn off his brain.

*

“This was not a good idea,” Erik said grimly. He eyed a stall that was selling a rainbow of fairy floss. Nina eyed it too, with considerably more enthusiasm.

“Look,” Angel said, with rather strained patience. “You said you wanted to get out of your apartment, and here we are, out of your apartment. You’re being civic, Erik, how often does that happen? Roll with it. Don’t destroy any more cameras.”

“They deserved it,” Erik said, with absolute conviction. Angel just rolled her eyes.

Erik had left the house at five in the morning to avoid a repeat of yesterday’s incident. Nina had been fiercely cranky about that for the past three hours, but Angel’s idea of hiding out at the student markets was working on at least one level – Nina was too interested in her surroundings to maintain her indignation. There was face painting. There were balloon animals. This might all be worth waking up too early in the morning for.

“How _long_ are you planning to stay away from the apartment, by the way?” Angel asked, stopping to look at a display of student artwork. “Like, this is going to take a while to blow over.”

“I’m still thinking,” Erik ground out.

Angel rolled her eyes again.

The student market was a cross between a garage sale and an open air gallery. There were a lot of artists selling their works today, from handmade scarves to impromptu sketches of passersby. Erik noted with approval the number of mutant-friendly stalls. A red-headed girl was handing out leaflets at the Mutant Pride booth; a boy with green skin was crouched on a wall with a set of speakers, rapping at furious speed. “They say I got a wicked tongue, makes spitting on tradition that much more fun,” the boy sang, his amphibian tongue flicking out to make the watching humans jump. Erik wanted to stay and listen, but Nina was yanking on his arm, so he dropped a fifty in the boy’s costume top hat instead and let himself be hauled away.

He passed an art stall where pictures of Senators who had voted for the failed mutant registration bill had been formed into the shape of a helmet, and spray painted over them were the scarlet letters MAGNETO WAS RIGHT. “Mutant icon,” Angel murmured. Erik was too unsettled to answer. He knew, of course, about the signs people held up at rallies, that they played his music to drown out the likes of Senator Kelly, but he had not been expecting this.

Angel took Nina off to have her face painted while Erik looked around warily for more surprises. No one seemed to have noticed him. A teenage girl with white cornrows and lightning bolt earrings was holding court nearby, making it snow on a sunny day. There were people who would not look at her as they went by, veering wide as if a mutant’s miracle was an obvious sin, but the crowd around her was bigger, laughing and wondering, heads tipped back to taste the snow before it melted.

Erik watched. Most of his attention was on the magnetic signature of Nina’s locket, two stalls away, but an approaching wheelchair was too much metal not to notice and he moved automatically out of the way. He did not look up until he heard his name.

“Erik?” It was incredulous, and it was unmistakably Charles Xavier.

*

As a usual thing, Charles loved markets. He could wander around for hours, piling bags on his lap, trying out samples of cheese and shortbread and chutney. Even a hangover and a lingering sense of doom could not ruin this for him.  There had to be a stall somewhere selling balloon animals because he kept seeing children run past with dogs or giraffes floating over their heads. Charles was hoping he’d find it, because he would quite like one of those himself.

It was habit to idly scan the surface thoughts around him, just for convenience’s sake – he never bumped into people because he knew where they were going to move before they did, and that was particularly useful when shoppers drifted about in clumps right in his way. There was nothing to really catch his attention, until suddenly there was.  _That_ mind. Unforgettable – sharp and bright and clear, sunlight glancing off metal, sculptural in its unyielding elegance.  As if  memory and worry and old pain had been a spell to conjure it out of nowhere.

Oh, Charles knew  it so well .

Erik’s name was out of his mouth before he could think better of it, and the man turned around. It was not the Erik Charles remembered – the beard was new, and flannel was never a look Erik had gone for in those days, but he wore it very well. Erik had been able to pull off scarlet and purple costumes and that hideous helmet back in the day; he would look good in anything. Charles tried to pull his scattered thoughts together. Erik was staring down at him with a blank sort of shock, as if Charles had come back from the dead rather than England, and he was clearly not going to be the one who said the right thing. Charles had the feeling he was not going to say it either, whatever those magical words might be.

“Goodness,” Charles said helplessly. “It’s been a long time.”


	3. Chapter 3

To silence Erik Lehnsherr was an almost unheard of feat. Charles might have enjoyed himself under other circumstances. As it was, he was delving into the depths of his soul for something to say that would keep Erik from vanishing without a trace like the bloody phantom he was.

“Charles,” Erik said slowly, testing out the word in his mouth. Charles had not heard his name from Erik in so long; it struck him dumb all over again.

“Erik,” he said at last, because he wanted to say it, wanted the flare of reaction Erik’s eyes and mind. Erik was shocked to see him, wary as he was when dealing with any surprise, but underneath that was an uncomplicated vein of happiness. He did not want to walk away from Charles. Yet.

“When did you arrive in the city?” Erik said, switching gears over to practicalities. It would have sounded a little hostile if Charles did not have a mental finger on the surface of his thoughts, watching them tumble into order. “Are you teaching at the university?”

“First week, actually,” Charles admitted. “I teach Mutant History. Wonderful class. And you?”

Erik lifted an eyebrow. “Am I mutant history? Apparently so.” Then the amusement faded and he said, “I never left the city, you know. Not for long.”

That meant something more to him than Charles was willing to probe. If they could make it through the first ten minutes of a conversation without accusations or outbursts of guilt, maybe they could do it again, and again, and make it to a whole hour. Charles was already running through his catalogue of all the cafes within walking distance, was tossing up whether to suggest a coffee or a meal, wondering whether Erik still mocked people who used the word ‘brunch’.

“You’ve been in Oxford,” Erik stated. “That’s right?”

“Among a few other places, yes. But I’m glad to be back.” Charles knew he sounded too sincere. He heard Erik’s mind note it, weigh it, put it aside to be considered later. Charles hurried on. “I live very close to the university, which made getting up early this morning a little less painful.”

Erik smiled. He was remembering the effort of getting Charles up in the mornings, the arguments and coaxing and occasional weekday blowjob. That was probably not an appropriate thread of thought to be pursuing right now. The same consideration struck Erik; he withdrew a little to tuck the memories firmly away and in the brief silence that followed Charles became aware of the sounds of the market around them, the fact that they had been for some minutes stock-still in everyone’s way. A woman with a pram had just maneuvered around them and was annoyed about it; a big man brushed past with arms full of bags. A little girl with her face all painted with black and yellow stripes came running over yelling “Papa, Papa, look at me!” and Erik turned instantly as the girl ran straight to him, throwing her arms around his leg.

“Oh,” Charles said softly. “Oh. This must be your daughter.”

The child’s attention turned from Erik to Charles and he received a brief flash of her impression of him: _stranger, knows Papa?, but I want Papa NOW_. She tugged at Erik’s jeans. Erik scooped her easily to sit on his hip.

“Nina, this is Charles. He’s a very old friend,” he said. The warmth in his mind infused his voice. “Charles, this is Nina.”

“Hallo,” Nina said, with well-trained courtesy.

Charles smiled at her. “Hello, Nina. I’m delighted to meet you.”

She did not look much like Erik. The straight dark hair must come from her mother, as did the shape of her face – but the eyes, she got those from her father, and the cool confidence in them was recognisably his too. With the advantage of her new height, she could pat at Erik’s cheek for his attention, which she immediately received.

“Papa, I’m a tiger!” she informed him, and gave a blood-curdling roar right in his ear. He laughed.

A young woman came up behind the pair of them. Charles thought she looked vaguely familiar. “In advance, I am not apologising,” she said, at the same time that Nina said, “I ate pink cloud!”

Erik’s eyes narrowed. He ran a suspicious thumb along Nina’s lower lip, coming away with pink sugary residue. “ _Angel_ ,” he hissed. “You gave her  _candy floss_ ?”

“When I started the baby-sitting gig, you said I’d be like a cool aunt,” Angel said defensively. “Cool aunts buy candy.” She glanced curiously at Charles, then did a double take. Charles’ reliable mental filing system produced the relevant memory; she was the girl who had noticed Raven on that first day on campus. “Uh, hi,” she said slowly.

Charles offered his name, his hand and a charming smile. Angel took all three, openly staring. Erik, meanwhile, was looking harassed and Charles was too fascinated by it to pay Angel much attention. In all the time he had known him, there had been very little domesticity to Erik’s life – the band hit it big so fast, no sooner did Erik have the money for a decent apartment than he no longer had any time to live in one, shuttling from hotel room to hotel room on seemingly never-ending tours.

Whenever he could stay in one place for a while, it was with Charles; lying in bed at three in the afternoon to slowly smoke cigarettes and listen to the Beatles, dancing in the kitchen while half a dozen knives clacked out their own rhythm on the countertops around him, fucking Charles on the living room rug then walking through the house naked afterwards – utterly unselfconscious – to bring back a bottle of Scotch and a chess set. Erik as a father was not a  _new_ concept to Charles, the media had kept him informed whether or not he wanted to be, but to see it firsthand was revelatory, like finally seeing the missing page in a well-loved book.

It also made Charles starkly aware of how long it had been since he was part of Erik’s life.

“Well,” he said, suddenly flustered and doubtful again, “I see you’re busy, I shouldn’t keep you...”

Erik’s eyes snapped to him. “No,” he said.  _Don’t do that, don’t be_ polite _to me._ “Stay.”

Angel’s thoughts went shrilly incredulous.  _MUTANT ICONS, MUTANT ICONS._ Nina frowned, not sure what was going on, not liking that she wasn’t sure. Charles said, softly, “Okay.” 

As if he would say anything else. It had always been Erik who would not stay.

*

Charles looked very well for an unwitting soon-to-be victim of the Brotherhood reunion maelstrom.

Erik was selfish. This was a fact he accepted about himself. He would be doing Charles a favour by letting him leave, because the longer they remained in each other’s company the more inevitable it was that they would be seen together – more importantly, photographed together – and Charles’ name would enter the churning mix of ‘will they, won’t they’ hype that was rapidly consuming Erik’s sanity. But Erik  _was_ selfish and he was not letting Charles go anywhere just yet.

He’d let his hair grow to almost shoulder-length; there were threads of early silver at the temples. He wore a fitted lavender T-shirt, vintage sunglasses pushed back on his head and one of the mutant flag buttons that the Mutant Pride stall had been selling. Erik felt out the cheap metal pin with a slight tendril of power and Charles took a sharp breath in response.

“Can we…” Charles shook his head slightly and Erik heard his mental voice inside his head. _If you’re that concerned about paparazzi, Erik, you can come to my house. It’s not far from here._

It was not a good idea, and Erik agreed immediately – aloud, which made Nina and Angel look at him in confusion. “Enjoy your hideout,” Angel said meaningfully when he had explained to her what was going on. She kissed Nina goodbye, said “Goodbye,  _Charles_ ” and walked off unprompted into the market, leaving the three of them to a short awkward pause.

“She seems very nice,” Charles offered.

“She’s not,” Erik said off-handedly, with vague affection. “If she was, she’d hardly be friends with me. Which way?”

Charles’s place was about fifteen minutes minutes away. Nina was quiet on the way there, the early start to her day catching up to her; she dozed against Erik’s shoulder as he carried her. Charles was quiet too, turning Erik in the right direction with mild telepathic nudges. It was a strange parallel to how they had first met: a sudden collision, the lightning jolt of awareness between them, Charles bringing Erik home like a stray cat. The differences being that a) Erik was eluding the media this time, not the police, and b) Charles was in a wheelchair, because Erik had put him there eleven years ago when Sebastian Shaw showed up at a band practice session, Erik lost control and the stage collapsed around them.

Charles had forgiven him at the time. It had been more than Erik could bear, to be told Charles didn’t blame him when he obviously must. The relationship had limped on for a few months, through hospital visits and therapy and the savage split with Shaw Records – through Raven’s horrified rage and Emma’s careful distance and Azazel’s helpless silence – until the unnatural calm broke, all the dirty laundry was tipped into the open air and they were done. It had been a kind of relief, when Charles told him to get out: Erik had finally got what he deserved.

“This is me,” Charles said, breaking Erik’s reverie. The house was behind tall gates and handsome landscaping, endeavouring to look understated but obviously expensive. The Xavier money was still doing its work. Inside, Charles sat Erik down in a beautifully furnished living room and went to make coffee. Erik laid Nina down on the cream lounge, where the sugar crash quickly hit. She was asleep when Charles returned with cups of coffee and tea, a glass of milk and a plate of cookies.

“Oh, poor thing,” he whispered when he saw her. “She’s all worn out. Here.” He took a folded afghan off the back of a chair and draped it carefully over Nina. Looking at him looking at her was…the roil of emotions were too complicated for Erik to parse out right now. It made him want to laugh and break something and kiss Charles and do absolutely nothing at all so that this moment would stretch out as long as possible.

“She’s lovely,” Charles said softly. “Her mind is so much like yours.”

Erik stared at him, dismayed. “I hope not.”

Charles shook his head, exasperated. “It’s a good thing, Erik. She’s clever, curious. Happy. She loves you very much.”

Erik took a breath. He could not formulate a reply to that, and Charles did not seem to expect one. He busied himself with the coffee, arranging the tray on a side table, and Erik got up to move restlessly around the room. There was not a great deal of furniture, allowing more space for Charles to maneuver his wheelchair; built-in bookcases and Charles’ eclectic art collection lined the walls. Erik paused at the mantlepiece, which was crowded with photographs. He was startled to see himself there – he must have been around twenty at the time, wearing a black turtleneck and a skeptical expression but with a smile playing around his mouth. Charles was tucked against his side, trying to hide a laugh in his shoulder.

The other pictures were a mix of family and friends. Erik’s lip curled unthinkingly at the studio portrait of Charles’ mother; he had always disliked her, with plenty of reason. He didn’t recognise most of the other people. But Raven was here – Raven was everywhere, actually, from an adorable five-year-old with a cloud of borrowed blonde ringlets framing her face (her Shirley Temple phase was something Charles had never allowed her to forget) to what looked like a recent picture, blue-skinned, red-haired, wearing a red suit and sitting in a mall Santa’s throne with a wicked smirk.

“How is she?” Erik asked, turning around.

“Thriving. She volunteers with disadvantaged mutant youth on the other side of the city, we work together sometimes.” Charles’ voice was light but he was avoiding Erik’s eyes; Raven still hated Erik, then, hardly surprising. “What about you, what are you doing these days?”

It was surreal to sit down on Charles’ elegant sofa, drink coffee – perfect coffee, made with unthinking precision to Erik’s taste – and talk about the past few years of his work, then listen to Charles talk about the different universities where he had taught. The conversation moved easily into politics. They got into an argument straight away about the mutant registration bill.

“It was always going to fail,” Charles said earnestly. “This was a last gasp from the conservatives.”

“It’s not a last gasp until they have been well and truly suffocated,” Erik said grimly. “And as far as I can see, they are still kicking and screaming in the Senate every time a mutant so much as looks the wrong way.”

“Do be fair, Erik, when some mutants look the wrong way they can kill people.” Charles sighed. “There have to be measures in place to stop that happening. The problem is that conservative politicians think of it as restricting weapons – ”

“Not a hypocritical stance at _all_ ,” Erik said with immense sarcasm.

“ - instead of supporting citizens. But we’ll get there. Look how much has changed since we were young.” Charles smiled. “Imagine what it could be like when we’re old.”

Erik looked at him, deeply irritated and deeply fond. “Ever the optimist, Charles.”

“Ever the pessimist, Erik.”

“I find it’s a more reliable foundation.”

“Yes, but is it going to get you anywhere?” There was an edge to Charles’ voice now. “When you assume the worst, you automatically block out any possibility of the best.”

“I hope for change, Charles.” Erik glanced at Nina. “I just don’t trust in it.”

Charles sat back with a sigh. “You were the face of change once, all the Brotherhood were – you can’t be surprised that they want you back. My students wear your old band shirts, they put your slogans on buttons and graffitti them on walls. You _are_ mutant history.” He paused. “So. Is the band getting back together?”

Erik made a sort of despairing snarl. “Not you too.”

“I take it that’s a no?” Charles’ gently malicious amusement shifted into genuine interest. “Do you still play? I can’t picture you without a guitar somewhere around.” Erik thought of the guitar he kept in Nina’s closet and Charles laughed. “Of course you have.”

“Papa?” Nina’s eyes had cracked open; she emerged from the folds of the afghan, crawling up onto Erik’s lap to sit there like an ill-tempered cat. She squinted at Charles. Then she looked at the untouched plate of cookies.

“Bathroom?” Erik asked briskly, whisking her away from the temptation of sugar. Charles provided another gentle mental nudge. When Erik returned, Nina slightly more awake and cranky about it, Charles remarked, “Do you mind me doing that? I should have asked before.”

“Mind what?” Erik asked distractedly, floating the tray out of Nina’s reach. She had not forgotten about the cookies.

Charles waved a hand at his head, suddenly awkward. Erik frowned at him. “Telepathy?” he said. “Why the fu- why would I mind your using telepathy? You’re a telepath. That is not news.”

“It bothers some people when I wander in and out of their brains,” Charles said drily.

“It doesn’t bother me,” Erik said shortly. He would have left it at that, once upon a time, but ten years had taught him a few basic conversational skills – for instance, when you snapped at people, they tended to assume that you were angry with them instead of the whole damn world for being endlessly bigoted in a multitude of ways. “I like it, remember?”

“People change,” Charles said. _Can she have just one cookie?_

“ _No_ ,” Erik said.

“Nina,” Charles said, in his softest, most persuasive voice, which was at least twice as persuasive as other people. Nina condescended to look at him. “Would you like to draw? I have paper.”

Nina thought about it for a long minute. “Danke,” she said at last.

“You speak a lot of German with her at home?” Charles asked, going over to a bureau and rummaging through the drawers. He produced a sheaf of notepaper and a biro.

“Yes. Magda does as well. We wanted her to be bilingual. I’d like her to learn some Yiddish, too, and maybe French when she gets older.” Erik settled Nina at the table and stepped back to let her scrawl forcefully all over the paper. “Magda says we should wait to see if she even likes linguistics first, which I suppose is fair.”

“Mm, not everyone picks up languages like secondhand books.” Charles did not look at Erik as he spoke again. “Magda…how is she?”

Given that Charles had never met her, Erik doubted he cared. He did not know what to make of Charles’ cautious politeness. “She’s well. Busy. We Skype for Nina pretty regularly but reception is appalling where she is right now.”

“I see.”

Erik had not seen any evidence of someone living in this house who was not Charles. These were Charles’ books he could see on the shelves, a blend of history, science, pulpy sci fi and classic children’s fantasy; this was Charles’ furniture, his work on the bureau, his pictures on the walls. There was no second toothbrush in the bathroom and yes, Erik had looked. He wondered if Charles was listening in on that thought. He wondered what he would make of it, if he was.

“Erik, what I – ” Charles began. He was interrupted by the dull irritating buzz of Erik’s phone in his pocket. They both went quiet, listening to the call, waiting to see what would happen.

Erik did not answer. The phone stopped buzzing. Charles opened his mouth; it started again.

The only reason Erik did not swear was because he had managed to mostly train himself out of it when Nina came along. He barked “Lehnsherr” into the phone without looking at the number and there was a tiny pause at the other end before Azazel said, “Have you see it already?”

Erik frowned. “What are you talking about?”

Azazel made an unhappy noise. “You haven’t. Erik, I don’t know what to say. It may not be true. Check the news.”

“What’s happened?” Erik demanded, alarmed. “What am I looking for?”

“I’m sending it to you. Erik…try not to be angry? They want you to be angry.”

Azazel hung up. The link popped up a split second later. Charles, sitting bolt-upright and watchful, saw what Erik saw, through Erik’s eyes.  _THE SECRET IS OUT: BROTHERHOOD LEAD SINGER ERIK LEHNSHERR’S LONG-LOST SON SPEAKS AT LAST._

“Oh, fuck,” Charles whispered.

*

So this was the revelation that Emma had wanted to palm off to Charles.

It was amazing what habits stuck around for the long haul. It had been over a decade since Charles had been around for Erik’s life of terrible drama but launching into damage control was still instinctual.  He scanned Erik’s mind quickly for his reaction, processing the turmoil as if it was his own. At the same time, he reached out to the street – how many people were in the blast radius?

But Erik mostly seemed in shock. He stood there, swaying slightly, the phone clutched in his hand. It was disintegrating slightly at the edges, where it connected with his fingers.

It took him reading the first paragraph of the article twice before the details could sink in.  Charles was too deep into his mind to concentrate any better. Words sprang out like electric shocks. A young man had come forward claiming that Erik was his father. Pietro Maximoff. He claimed that he’d had support from members of the Brotherhood. Fucking Emma, obviously. There was a photo. Angular cheekbones – might be Erik’s. Silver hair at twenty, hanging in his face, pretentious sunglasses, shoulders raised defensively.  He was wearing a band shirt, one of the early ones, purple with the band in silhouette posing beneath jagged letters: THE BROTHERHOOD. The way he was standing meant only one of those figures showed clearly – tall, lean, helmeted.

Erik's thoughts were a reeling mess. Liar. Imposter. But was it true?  _Liar._ Erik would know. But w hat if it was  true?

Charles yanked himself out of Erik’s consciousness in order to think properly. From what he knew about Erik’s love life before he came on the scene himself, it had been more or less non-existent – the occasional hook-up , with firm disinterest in anything more. Charles had not been much better. Their mutual inexperience with being emotionally intimate with…well, anyone they were not related to, was in hindsight a strong factor in the inevitable relationship meltdown. 

Erik was still in thrall  to his smoking phone screen. He only emerged from the haze when Nina started to cry. She knew something was wrong, that something had happened that could shake her unflappable father, and she was already halfway to convinced that the world was ending. Erik dropped  his phone  on the floor and scooped her up, burying his face in her hair. “I’m sorry,  _liebling,_ I’m sorry,” he breathed. 

_Erik,_ Charles said. _You can’t go home._ It was always the question when Erik was wounded, whether he would lean towards a hand held out to him or try to bite it off. Erik’s whole body tensed; he did not immediately respond. _The media will be waiting. Not just reporters. Everyone will have a spin on this, and you only get one chance to make it yours._

_Your advice?_ Erik asked, his mental voice dangerously toneless.

_You can stay here for a couple of days, to give yourself some breathing space. Azazel would help you fetch whatever you need from home.  
_

Erik twisted around to stare at him, cradling Nina against his chest. “You would do that?” he said incredulously. “Charles, that’s…how are you still alive? You have no survival instinct at all.”

Charles smiled. “Maybe mine is better than yours. Was that a no?”

Erik shook his head slowly. “If you mean it, I’ll take it.”

_It might not be true, Erik,_ Charles ventured gently, knowing he was pushing it. _The timing…_

The phone exploded.

All things considered, that had gone pretty well.


	4. Chapter 4

“Are you fucking crazy,” Raven hissed.

“Crazy is a perjorative and particularly hurtful when directed at telepaths, you ought to know better,” Charles said in his calmest professorial voice, to hide the fact he had no idea what he was doing. Also, he hated being called crazy and he was going to train Raven out of it one of these days. “Erik and I wanted some time to catch up – ”

“Let’s start there with _why_ ,” Raven growled.

“And then under the circumstances it was common courtesy to offer him a place to say until all this ridiculous furore dies down,” Charles continued, tucking his phone in between his ear and his shoulder while he squinted doubtfully down at the vegetables he was attempting to turn into a dinner for three. “Raven, it’s a bombshell, what else could I do?”

“ _He_ is a bombshell,” Raven pointed out furiously.

Charles sighed. “Well, yes, the years have done him a few favours…”

“Ugh, no, I mean he is a literal walking talking bomb, he blows things up when he loses his temper, you just told me he exploded his phone.” Raven sounded like she was talking through gritted teeth. “Charles. Get him out of your house.”

Charles took a deep breath. “No.”

“Then I will come over and throw him out myself. You’re not safe with him there.”

“As I don’t plan on standing between him and the man who brutally exploited him this time, I think I’ll be fine,” Charles said coolly. “You can of course come over to say hello if you like.”

He hung up and stopped pretending that he was making dinner, or that he was alone. Behind him, Erik said in his blankest voice, “I assume you intended for me to hear all of that.”

Erik had been on the other side of the house when Charles called Raven, bathing Nina and getting repeatedly splashed as she pretended to be a shark. She was settled in the living room now, enthralled by the magic of Peppa Pig. Charles had been fully aware of every step Erik took through his house, and had kept talking anyway. He would have much rather waited a while, let the dust of one crisis settle before provoking another, but he did not know how much time he had. Too much had been left unsaid the first time around. Look where that had got them.

“We may as well clear the air.” Charles turned around, resting his hands on the armrests of his chair in an attempt to look composed. Erik stood in the doorway, arms folded, looking threatening because that was what his face did in times of self-doubt. Charles had always wondered how anyone who didn’t read minds could possibly make sense of him. Then again, that had always been Charles’ problem: thinking he knew more than he did.

“I was thinking only the other day about the first time we met,” Charles began. “I fell in love with your mind then and there in the water and I made the mistake of thinking I actually understood it.” Erik’s eyes widened at the word ‘love’, as if he had thought they were politely going to pretend they were old friends and nothing more. Charles checked; he _had_ thought that. Typical. He was only ever polite when it was least convenient.

“What you went through,” Charles said, “what Shaw did to you – he hurt you in so many ways, and I thought I understood what you felt. No, worse than that. I thought I knew what you _ought_ to feel.”

Erik had been running from the police that night with bruises on his face, but later, when the situation with Shaw became unbearable, where had Charles told him to go? It had felt so rational at the time. Charles had been so sure his way was the best way.

“What happened to me was not your fault.” Charles held up a hand to stop Erik from answering that. _I’m not done yet._ _Pleas_ _e_ _._ Erik subsided grudgingly, his face set into hard lines. “What would you say, if you read a story in the newspaper about an abused young mutant who lost control and caused destruction he never intended? I _know_ what you’d say, because I have heard you say it. You paralysed me, yes.” Erik flinched.  Charles ignored it – he had wanted to say this for so long. “It was not my fault either. I was young and stupid and I was wrong about…oh, a lot of things, but I still don’t believe I could have done anything else. If I saw danger, the only place I could be was in front of you.”

E rik could not contain himself then;  t he vivid memory of that night was flicked in Charles’ direction like a middle finger.  He could think of a lot of things that Charles could have done differently, starting with not jumping in between two extremely powerful mutants who were busy imploding at each other. The memory was so bound up in guilt  and grief, anger and love,  that it took Charles’ breath away for a minute.

“I’m perfectly happy to blame Shaw for his part,” Charles said shakily, when he could speak again. He was dreadfully close to tears. “But even he couldn’t have predicted the trajectory of one tiny shard of metal. Erik, it was a fucked up bit of chance that put me in a wheelchair. You never meant to hurt me.”

“My good intentions didn’t put your spine back together,” Erik snapped out. “Don’t _pretend_ , Charles.”

“I did blame you at the time,” Charles admitted. Erik made a sharp noise, bitten off before it could betray more than a breath. _I knew it._ “I lied about that. I didn’t want you to leave, but I didn’t know how to forgive you either. So you did leave. After that, I just…kept lying. To everyone. I pretended I was coping when in reality I was a depressed, day-drinking mess. It meant so much to me that people believed the lie, I didn’t…” 

Charles rubbed his hands over his face. “Well, my therapist tells me it was a natural reaction to trauma. What I’m trying to say, very badly I suppose, is that this is my reality now. I am in a wheelchair. I t’s not always easy, but I have a good life. I’m dealing with it, so it would be nice if you could deal with it too, and we could get past this at last.  It’s about time, don’t you think?”

The look on Erik’s face was a pretty good representation of the emotional pile-up going on inside his head. “I _put_ you in a _wheelchair_ ,” he gritted out eventually. “Did you just tell me to get over it?”

“You can apologise to me now if you like,” Charles said kindly. “And you can fix my egg whisk. I was trying to make omelettes but it’s harder than I thought.”

Erik stared at him some more. He looked like he was going to cry, or possibly scream. “I am truly, utterly sorry,” he said at last, very quietly, deathly serious, as if etching each word in rock, “for everything I did to hurt you, Charles.” He took a deep breath. “Forget the whisk. I’ll cook.”

He did cook. Charles stayed to tell him where everything was kept, and after that, he stayed just to watch. He had always loved the way Erik worked a kitchen, the easy dance of knives and pans and spoons all obeying the least twitch of his capable hands. There was a strangely domestic silence between them. Erik occupied Charles’ space with the cool self-possession that had always been his coping mechanism of choice, mind processing frantically while his hands flicked imperious commands to the fridge and stovetop.

Halfway through the assembly of dinner, when Erik had a pan of onions simmering and a pot of thickening sauce stirring beside it, Nina got bored with _Peppa Pig_ and came wandering in. Erik flew a spoon over for her to taste; she laughed gleefully, catching it with her mouth. Charles laughed too, so caught up in the perfection of the moment he almost forgot he did not belong to it.

It appeared that Nina had been trained not to bother her father too much when he was cooking – it required a certain amount of concentration to manage so many simultaneous tasks, after all – so she leaned on the armrest of Charles’ wheelchair and bothered him instead. Erik’s obvious approval of Charles had gone a long way to overcoming Nina’s initial distrust. Erik did not approve of that many people and Nina tended to believe his judgement. Also, Charles had given her paper and she thought he had a ‘storybook’ voice (even he, the most powerful recorded telepath of his generation, could not parse what she meant by that one), so he was managing to charm her with his own merits. He was inordinately proud of that.

She wanted to know if he had pets, and was disappointed that he didn’t. Papa had apparently promised her a pet when she was big enough to look after it herself. She wanted a badger. “Badgers are not pets, _liebling_ ,” Erik said distractedly, summoning the kettle with a crook of his finger. Nina scowled at him. She thought a badger would make a lovely pet. Failing that, she was willing to settle for a moose, or the brightly coloured rainforest frogs from her favourite picture book. Erik unsympathetically vetoed all of them. Nina, clearly in the market for an ally, asked Charles what his favourite animal was.

“I’ve always liked sharks,” Charles told her, straight-faced. Erik shot him a sharp look that slowly relaxed into a knowing smile. Heat prickled down Charles’s throat. He was fiercely, hypocritically glad that Erik could not see his thoughts.

Nina liked sharks too. She might like sharks _best._ She made snapping teeth with her hands and sang a horrific earworm of a song about baby sharks that Erik ended up singing along to in the resigned tones of a designated captive audience. Charles took pity on him and tried to distract Nina by telling her about other underwater wonders, like cephalopods and bioluminescent deep-sea fish. Nina frowned at him and turned around to check with Erik that Charles was telling the truth.

Erik was watching with a small, almost pained smile on his face. “Yes, it’s true,” he said. “You can take Charles’ word for it.”

“I’ll prove it,” Charles announced. He showed Nina YouTube clips on his phone and she actually climbed into his lap to see better. It was official – Charles was besotted. _She’s going to be a scientist when she grows up,_ he thought excitedly to Erik. _I’m betting on it now, she’ll be a marine biologist._

_You didn’t see what she was like at the petting zoo. She may throw civilisation aside and go to raise goats in the middle of nowhere._

_If she takes after you, she might very well do that, but_ I  _am going to try and win her for science._

Charles had a dining table big enough to make Erik raise his eyebrows expressively, so they ate dinner in the breakfast nook. Erik had fished around in Charles’ crockery cupboard until he found a small, sturdy mug that Nina could handle and she was using a cake fork to eat her pasta, frequently flicking sauce or bits of spinach onto the expensive linen tablecloth. Erik tucked her hair behind her ears to get it out of her way as she ate.

Inviting the two of them home had been a dreadful decision. Charles was already not sure how he was going to let them leave again.

Just as they finished eating, Azazel appeared in the living room with carry bags full of clothes from Erik’s apartment. He landed on the back of the sofa and promptly tumbled off. “The co-ordinates were wrong, Erik,” he complained, muffled, struggling to his feet. Nina pounced immediately, holding up her arms to be hugged. She screamed happily when a shark plushie fell out of Azazel’s pocket.

Azazel looked apprehensively over Nina’s head, first at Erik, then at Charles.. Apparently everyone was expecting explosions.

“Hello, Azazel,” Charles said brightly. “How are you doing these days?”

“Charles, it has been…You look well.” Azazel’s mind was swamped with a wave of awkwardness; he had not see Charles since the first weeks of therapy after the accident. He did not think Charles looked well, he thought he looked broken, and he knew that Charles knew it. Charles resisted the urge to give him a headache. He faced the temptation so, so often.

“Your clothes,” Azazel said to Erik, sticking out the hand that was holding the bags.

“Thanks,” Erik said ruefully. “It was good of you, Az.”

Azazel looked between Erik and Charles, clearly desperately wanting to ask all kinds of questions. Eventually he settled for, “This will not blow over quickly, Erik.”

Erik scrubbed a hand over his forehead. “I just need some time to think.”

Azazel put Nina down and clasped Erik’s shoulder. “Whatever you need, my friend.”

He did not stay long. Charles politely offered him coffee, which he equally politely refused, and then it was just the three of them again in the quiet house.

“The spare room is just down here,” Charles said. “I can fetch out the inflatable mattress for Nina–”

Erik shook his head. “She can stay with me.” He fished through the bags until he found everything he needed for her night-time rituals. Nina was not sleepy; she bounced up and down on her feet as Erik brushed her teeth and asked endless questions through the reading of the first two bedtime stories. “If you want me to sing, you’d better settle,” he said decidedly, closing the second book with a snap, and Nina finally laid down.

Erik stroked her hair for a few minutes, until he was sure she was going to keep still, and began to sing quietly. Charles could not help listening in; it had been so long since he had heard Erik sing.

“Come gather ‘round people, wherever you roam, and admit that the waters around you have grown.” Erik’s voice was low, its natural intensity banked to a soothing warmth. “And accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone. If your time to you is worth savin’…”

Nina chimed in and they sang together. “Then you’d better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone, for the times they are a-changin’.”

It took over an hour for her to fall asleep. In that time, Erik’s mind slowly calmed too, lulled by music and the weight of Nina’s head on his leg.

“So your daughter’s lullabies are 1960s protest songs,” Charles said, when she was finally asleep and Erik had eased himself carefully off the bed to return to the living room. “You know, I honestly think I’d have been disappointed by anything else.”

“Bob Dylan is her favourite,” Erik said proudly. “She likes the Beatles too, though.”

“There’s still coffee left,” Charles said, more tentatively. “If you want some.”

Erik paused. Charles tried not to eavesdrop, but was hyper-aware of the hum of his consideration. “All right,” Erik agreed, after a moment, and took the chair beside Charles. “Your coffee-maker is very good.”

“Well, I’m glad it was worth the ruinous price my colleagues paid for it when I left Oxford. I didn’t have the heart to remind them I drink tea.”

Erik laughed. “Good thing too, or they might have asked for it back.”

Charles sipped at his Earl Grey and watched Erik as subtly as he could. One of his more destructive tendencies had always been a certain possessiveness – it was a telepath thing, Emma was the same – and he could feel it reawakening with every minute Erik spent in the house. The lean, fierce physical beauty of him and the architectural elegance of his mind were a combined lure Charles had a long history of being disastrously incapable of resisting.

“I missed you,” he said.

“You shouldn’t,” Erik said bluntly. “I was a wreck to be around for a long time.”

“Well, yes.” Charles smiled at him over his tea. “Believe it or not, I was rather a wreck myself.”

Erik considered that too. “I do believe it, actually,” he said, and it was Charles’ turn to laugh.

“I mean it, though,” Erik continued. “I couldn’t be good for anyone, not for years. I was too angry. Magda was angry too and so we worked for a while, but even she couldn’t handle me for the long haul. I’m exhausting. I’m relentless. I have an enormous capacity for bad attitude.”

“You’re saying all that like it’s news,” Charles remarked. His unreliable heart was beating faster.

“Not news. A warning, maybe,” Erik said. “I missed you too.”

It felt inevitable to kiss him then, almost obligatory, the grammatically correct punctuation to the string of events that had led them to this. It was known and at the same time, new – the beard was disorienting for the first few minutes, but Charles was committed to experimentation and discovered that the scrape of it against his cheek and chin was not at all unpleasant once he got used to it. He thought it would feel quite nice in other places too and was soon proved right when Erik’s mouth drifted to his throat, his earlobe, his shoulder.

Erik nudged a wordless question at him and Charles responded with a nod that was more a sway, leaning into the hand Erik now had pressed against the side of his neck. Before, this would have been the point when he climbed over into Erik’s lap, using his full weight to push Erik backwards and speed things up. Now, Charles led the way to his bedroom, his hand trembling with nervous energy as he reached to open the door. He felt Erik’s attention flick briefly around the room, noting the king-size bed with interest and gentle asperity. _It looks right in the space,_ Charles thought at him defensively. And it had made it easier, sometimes, with lovers who were not quite sure they wanted to stay, to give them enough space to decide before morning came.

He wondered if Erik would be one of them, after the sense of rightness that came with their reunion had run its course and he was thinking clearly again. Maybe Charles would regret it too, when the heady rush of Erik’s presence vanished again and he had to assess the damage.

Erik kissed him again, and Charles regretted nothing.

*

“You’re too impulsive,” Charles had often told Erik, back in the days when he had the chance to tell him anything at any time. “Take a deep breath. Embrace second thoughts. Stop yelling at people.”

He seemed completely on board with Erik’s impulses right now.

Charles had been tremendously efficient in his arrangement first of pillows and then of himself, in a way that implied a good deal of practice and made Erik grit his teeth down on a whole host of uselessly jealous speculations. The only thing to do was join him on the bed and kiss him until they both ached, until Charles pulled away to gasp out, “Shit, my shoes, I didn’t take them off.” His eyes were shocked-wide and his mouth was wet.

Erik slid down the bed to untie Charles’ laces, carefully sliding off each shoe. Charles’ breath stuttered as Erik unrolled his socks, baring the pale, vulnerable skin of each foot. Erik cradled the heels in his palms, knowing Charles could not feel it. He did not know what to do with the enormity of what he felt. It was too much, with Charles, it always had been and now it was worse.

Fingers slid through his hair. “My face is up here,” Charles said softly.

Erik climbed back up the bed to him for another kiss, harder than it should have been, too much teeth. Charles made a pleased noise, pushing forward into it. His nails dug into the muscle between Erik’s shoulder blades, demanding more. Pushy as ever, then. Erik went to work on every tiny piece of metal they were both wearing until neither wore anything at all. The sensation of his shirt buttons working their way free, scraping very gently over his skin, made Charles whimper and Erik wanted him so badly he could hardly think. His powers were at their strongest when he was on an emotional high; he was hyperaware of all the metal in the room, the coiled pattern of springs inside the mattress, the grid of pipes behind the walls, the watch on Charles’ bedside table and the shape of something else in the drawer underneath.

Erik lifted an eyebrow and leaned over to hook the drawer open. “Well, this is interesting.”

Charles snorted helplessly as Erik examined the metal plug. “You would notice that.”

Erik smirked at him. “You know how much I appreciate good quality steel.”

“Remind me.”

There was lube in the drawer, too, and condoms. Erik grabbed them out in a handful and it was Charles’ turn to smirk. “Look who’s all optimistic now,” he said approvingly, petting the nearest bit of Erik that he could reach, which was just above his hip. Erik twisted into the touch, so that Charles could drag his hand up over Erik’s ribs and up to the new scratches across his shoulders. Charles made a low, satisfied noise as he found them. Years ago, he had been a possessive lover, wearing Erik’s clothes on nights out together, leaving adoring bruises sucked into Erik’s throat and chest and thighs, demanding to be fucked harder so that he would feel it for days afterwards. That much, it seemed, was still the same.

Erik’s favourite kink, unsurprisingly, was metal. Magda had joked once, while he was showering and she was powering through an illicit post-coital cigarette, that the ideal lover for him would be a robot. He’d taken the suggestion badly and one of their bad fights had gathered steam from there, but she’d had a point. Not everyone liked to be presented with a pair of handcuffs that had been a jar of paperclips literally five seconds ago. Not everyone liked handcuffs at all. Charles did, of course, but then he was a telepath who could make you melt the handcuffs to slag with a gentle prod from his practically omniscient brain. He liked to play at vulnerability in bed because it hardly existed for him anywhere else.

Maybe it did, now, but Erik doubted that.

“Stop overthinking every damn thing,” Charles said fiercely. “Fuck me, Erik, it’s not complicated.”

“Oh, Charles, you are wrong about everything,” Erik said, laughing, and Charles bit him on the shoulder, which made Erik laugh harder.

He managed to thumb open the lube one-handed and began to stroke Charles’ cock, settling on a slow rhythm, almost soothing, only Charles was not at all soothed. It took longer to get him hard than it ever had before – _it_ _takes me a while these days_ _,_ Charles murmured, _keep going, oh, that again please, don’t stop –_ but he writhed under Erik’s hand, hissing and whimpering as if he had not been touched in years. “Erik. _Erik_.”

Erik gave him what he wanted eventually, fingering him open with the same methodical care, grinning at Charles’ half-sobbed cursing. When he actually slid the plug into place with a thin tendril of his power, Charles turned his face into the pillow to muffle his cry. Erik could feel the plug as if he was inside Charles himself; he moaned appreciatively and loosed a little more power, wringing a stronger vibration out of the steel. Charles’ neck arched, his eyes going very wide.

“More,” he demanded. “More of that.”

It wasn’t long before he was too far gone to even make demands. He offered up what he felt, a blazing pleasure that flared even brighter when Erik eased the plug out and slid into its place. Erik was well beyond coherency himself. He was vaguely aware that he should not be letting everything he felt so close to the surface, but it did not seem nearly as important as fucking Charles into the mattress. He felt as if he was sinking into Charles’ mind as surely as he was sinking into his body, unable to tell any more what noises were said aloud and what was happening only in the hot, electric space where their minds overlapped.

When Charles’ orgasm crashed over him, it swept through Erik too, leaving them both gasping in its wake. Erik gradually became aware that he was stroking Charles’ hair and that Charles was kissing his wrist so lightly he was really just brushing his mouth back and forth across the pulse point.

“You don’t need to worry. Nina is fast asleep,” he said peacefully, lifting the thought out of Erik’s mind before it could fully form. “She’s dreaming about water. It’s a nice dream. Does she like to swim?”

Erik nodded. The movement dragged the tip of his nose up and down against Charles’ cheek.

“She loves you so much,” Charles said, his voice still dreamy, his consciousness still vast and glowing around them. “And you love her so much. I didn’t know you wanted to be a father. Isn’t that silly? I didn’t think there was anything I didn’t know about you, back then.”

“I didn’t know,” Erik said softly. “Nina…happened.”

“I always wanted you to be happy,” Charles murmured. “More than anything, just happy, Erik.”

“That, I knew,” Erik said. “I wanted the same for you, Charles.”

He kept petting his hair until Charles came back to himself. He blinked up at Erik like he was surfacing from deep water and reached up to run a very careful thumb along Erik’s lower lip.

“I missed you,” he said.

Erik kissed him, small soft kisses until Charles drifted into sleep. It didn’t take long. Then he sat up, the only one awake in the house. He cleaned up quietly, dressed and went to check on Nina, who was curled into a ball in the middle of the big guest bed, her shark plushie tucked under her cheek like a small toothy pillow. Erik lay down beside her, expecting to sleep easily himself, but he did not. There was a prickling restlessness beneath his skin. Pietro Maximoff was twenty years old – or, Erik’s cynicism noted, _said_ he was. That meant Erik would have been eighteen when he was born. He tried to imagine it. A little boy Nina’s age, running around in one of the shitty apartments where Erik had lived during his teens. It was not a good picture. Erik had been a livewire of passion and rage back then; it had taken the better part of two decades for it all to simmer down to manageable levels. He dreaded to think what kind of influence he would have been on a child. He had not wanted to be a father back then – as Charles could testify, it had never even occurred to him. It was absolutely logical that Pietro’s mother would not have told Erik about his son.

And yet. The thought of it was a bitterness that burned in his mouth. That he had had a child and never known it, never had a chance to know it, that all the moments of a childhood had passed by without him –

He hoped, fiercely, that it was all a lie. That would be better than the truth.

*

Charles woke several times in the night. The first time, he opened his eyes and Erik was not there. He reached out blindly with his mind, expecting the worst, only to find Erik’s half-awake thoughts a couple of rooms away. Charles brushed questioningly against them. A moment he later heard steps approaching in the hall and Erik appeared as a silhouette in the doorway. “Go back to sleep, Charles,” he said, and Charles did.

When he got up in the morning, Erik had finally fallen asleep, curved in an awkward angle on the guest bed to accommodate Nina, who had at some point in the night turned into a starfish. Charles made tea for himself, coffee for Erik, and rummaged out some orange juice from the back of the fridge for Nina, arranged the breakfast table down to perfectly folded napkins. Then he sat in front of the window and waited, his stomach in knots, for Erik to wake up.

Having sex with the ex-love-of-his-life last night had been a terrible decision, precisely the kind of decision that Raven had been afraid of, and while he could not bring himself to actually regret it, he could easily imagine that Erik would.

Nina woke first, rolling off the bed and exploring the room for a bit before climbing back up to pat her father’s face until he woke up too. Erik snapped awake instantly. Charles drew back immediately, guilty, aware again of himself as an intruder. He was not a part of Erik’s family – and Magda indelibly was, which was one of the list of things Charles was trying not to think about.

“Charles!” Nina shouted, bounding down the hall ahead of her father. “ _Fruit Loops_!”

“I keep them for Raven,” Charles said, wincing at Erik’s betrayed look. “The only cereal I’ve got. She gets nostalgic about them.”

“You used to eat porridge,” Erik said accusingly.

“Can’t stand it now,” Charles admitted.

Nina had not wasted time helping herself to a bowlful of sugary rainbow goodness and was now adding milk, splashing it all over the tablecloth. Erik sighed and sat down, taking in the rest of the table: the toast rack, three varieties of jam, the ridiculous folded napkins. _This is nice,_ he said slowly.

_Too much,_ Charles corrected, already sulking into his teacup.

_I am going to show you my kitchen one day soon,_ Erik said, which did not seem like an answer, but it was fond and amused and Charles was going to take it.

After breakfast, Nina wanted to see the garden, so Charles led the way out onto the back deck and the attached semicircle of beautifully manicured grass. Erik conjured up little metal balls that zipped through the air and hid in the bushes for Nina to find, and stood on the deck watching her run around with a flat blank expression on his face. Charles waited. He could guess what was coming.

“I want to meet him,” Erik said.

“Do you believe he’s really your son?” Charles asked gently.

“It’s possible.” Erik pushed his hands into his pockets, as if he didn’t quite trust them at present. “I don’t know.” _I have to know,_ he thought, almost imploringly. _Wouldn’t you?_

Charles sighed. “Have you considered that Emma has set all this up just to get a reaction out of you? Any publicity is good publicity with her, as far as I recall.”

“Azazel would say that she’d never go that far,” Erik said dryly. “He thinks she’s mellowed.”

“What would you say?”

“That I’m a paranoid bastard, and she’s a ruthless corporate bitch who plays bass like a dream.” Nina was pulling leaves off the hedge and throwing them in the air as green confetti; Erik’s eyes never left her. “It doesn’t make much difference, does it?”

If Pietro was his son, it didn’t. If. Charles drew a deep breath and told himself to let it alone, that Erik had a grip on the situation and the last thing he needed was his ex-lover barging in with advice, but if that was how Erik felt, he shouldn’t have fucked Charles last night – he shouldn’t have stopped to talk to Charles in that market at all, because one thing Charles could never resist doing was giving people advice, even when he knew perfectly well they didn’t want to hear it.

“If you want to be sure,” he began, and all good sense was lost for good when Erik slowly began to smile.

*

The stadium was pitch black and dead silent, though every seat had been filled. It was as though the entire audience was a single entity, holding its breath, riveted on the stage. A single chord thrummed out, resonant as a bell; a brilliant white spotlight snapped on and there she was: the White Queen, as her fans called her, wearing her signature white corset and thigh high boots and the smirk that said she _owned_ you, and you knew you liked it. _Can you feel it, can you feel it?_

Another blinding flash and there was Mystique, sapphire-blue scales, flaming red mohawk, voice big enough to fill the stadium, maybe big enough to fill the world. _There’s an earthquake on its way…._ She was the band’s drawcard, their gimmick. She could provide guest vocals from anyone she had ever heard. John Lennon, Kate Bush, Frank Sinatra – it was a pit of vipers in terms of copyright law and her fans adored her for it. But that night, on that stage, she sang with her own voice, hard and deep and clear.

The next spotlight illuminated empty stage. In a swirl of red, Azazel appeared with his full drum kit, lifting an eyebrow at the screaming cheers that greeted each new arrival. _Can you feel it, can you feel it? The world’s about to change._

A pause. A lull. You all know who you’re waiting for.

Magneto descended from the sky like a falling angel, black cape around his shoulders, signature helmet in place – all that was missing from the picture was a broadsword. He hit the stage and was already striding down towards the audience, arms sweeping outward. The screams were deafening. The stage began to rise into the air.

Erik snapped his fingers and the TV screen went dark.

“Awww,” Emma drawled, finally emerging from her office, where she had been endeavouring to make him sweat. “It was just getting to the good part.”

“If you like a re-run,” Erik said coldly, standing up.

She had left him waiting for nearly half an hour, to make her point, and he was very nearly out of fucks to give. Another ten minutes and he might have changed his mind, given up on the idea of a face-to-face with the walking, talking publicity stream she had conjured out of thin air. This was not his son. It was a stranger who had gone to Emma instead of Erik.

_Yes, Erik, because you’re so terribly approachable,_ Charles murmured into his mind.

_And Emma is charm itself,_ Erik retorted, but it was empty – Emma could of course be charming if it was worth her while. She had not performed on stage in a corset for comfort, and she had not smiled in every interview because she was happy to be there.  The tailored white three-piece suit  she was currently wearing was a far cry from her bodice-ripper rockstar days, but  the same tactics tended to be effective wherever she went,  and where they failed she was happy to cut corners. Right now s he was looking at  Erik consideringly, noticing the sudden blank where his mind should be.  Charles was the stronger telepath; he couldn’t block her directly, but he could make Erik completely inaccessible.

_Oh, you do that pretty well yourself,_ Charles remarked.

_You’re very sarcastic this morning._

_I’m giving up my weekend to sit in this cinema watching a movie about talking dolphins and simultaneously interview your son with you, I feel entitled to a bit of sniping._

_Is Nina enjoying it?_

_Yes, Nina is enjoying it very much, and no, before you ask, I did not buy her soda. We compromised on popcorn._ Charles sounded like he was smiling.  _She argues just like you, it’s uncanny._

“There’s no getting hold of you these days, Magneto,” Emma remarked, lifting her perfectly threaded eyebrows. “Seems a girl has to bring the drama if she wants your attention.”

“Fuck you, Emma,” Erik said, in what he thought was a quite reasonable tone. “Where is he?”

Emma was, as ever, a class act in manipulation. Stick had got Erik where she wanted him; now to produce the carrot. She gestured graciously towards the frosted glass walls of her office. “Why don’t we go sit down and have a talk,” she suggested. She must have sent a command straight to the mind of one of her lackeys, because they had not even reached the office door when Erik found himself being offered coffee by a wide-eyed assistant. It was, naturally, his exact order.

What was charming in Charles was infuriating in Emma; the inherent unfairness of telepathy. Erik did not touch the coffee, though he knew it would be perfect. Emma opened the office door and Erik nearly dropped his cup, because Pietro Maximoff sprawled on the couch right in front of him.

The office was vast, a suite of sleek white leather couches, little glass tables and lush plantlife, which when combined with the wall of floor to ceiling windows, gave something of the impression of a greenhouse. Pietro was looking out the window; at the sound of the door closing he turned so fast he blurred and jerked to his feet in an instant. He looked younger in person than he had in the photos, shoulders awkward under a Pink Floyd band shirt that had seen better days. Erik noted every ounce of metal on him: the zips on his jacket and jeans, the aglets on his boot laces, the studs in his ears. If this was his son, he’d have given him something better; a watch maybe, or a pendant, a distinctive piece of metal that Erik would recognise from any distance and never, ever lose him.

A bit too late for any of that. Erik put down his coffee, so he would not be tempted to throw it.

“Erik?” Pietro said, like he wasn’t sure about it. “Uh, Mr Lehnsherr. Wow. Hi.”

“Erik will do.” Sensible of him not to try for ‘Dad’. “I assume I call you Pietro.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s – yeah, that’s my name.” Pietro sat down again but his left leg was bouncing up and down very fast, a nervous tic, or maybe a sign of impatience. He, too, had been waiting for half an hour. And a lifetime before that. “So…is any of that coffee for me, or do I have to get my own?”

“Ask Emma, this is her show,” Erik said. He actually felt Charles wince inside his head.

“Whoa, okay,” Pietro said, holding up his hands. “I’m not asking for favours, if that’s what you think. And I _can_ get my own.” There was a blur of silver hair and then he was half a metre away from where he’d been standing before, holding a waxed paper cup loaded up with whipped cream. He was looking at Erik for a reaction, a little defiant, a lot smug, and underneath that…

_Hopeful,_ Charles whispered.  _He’s the real deal, Erik. It’s up to – oh, shit._

_What?_

_Nina’s fine. Everything is fine. You carry on. I’d say it’s your show now._

*

For someone who was not a telepath, Raven was an almost supernaturally good guesser. That was the only explanation Charles had for what she was doing waiting for him outside the cinema, wearing her favourite blonde persona and a yellow-eyed glare.

“I leave you alone for a week and you hook up with your ex, invite him to stay indefinitely in your house and wade into the fucking melodrama with his long-lost _son_ ,” she said disgustedly. “Charles, you are supposed to be _bright_.”

“It’s not like that,” Charles said. “Please don’t swear in front of Nina.”

“Who?” Raven looked past Charles and stared at Nina Lehnsherr, who stared back suspiciously. “Oh my God, have you adopted his kid?”

_Stop talking, Raven, she will repeat every word she hears to Erik and I am not having her learn profanity from us!_ Charles implored.  _Erik needed me to look after her while he met with Pietro, and I was only too happy to do it. Raven, she’s a delight._

_You are an idiot,_ Raven said. She  was thoroughly wrong-footed by Nina’s existence, as if Erik’s life had stopped moving forward when Raven exited it.  She did stop swearing, though, which was as much as Charles had hoped. 

“I want Papa,” Nina said abruptly.

“Papa’s a bit busy right now, but he’ll come and get you very soon,” Charles began.

“I want Papa now,” Nina said, more forcefully. She had been perfectly content five minutes ago, bouncing along at Charles’ elbow and trying to convince him that Erik wanted them to buy ice cream. Now he sensed a building tantrum and was at a loss for how to deal with it. “Where’s Papa? I want to go home! Where’s Uncle Az? Where’s Angel?”

“Why don’t we start walking and go find them?” Charles suggested desperately, aware of passersby turning to look. He searched Nina’s mind for options and was horrified to realise she had interpreted ‘go find them’ as meaning ‘Papa is LOST’. She was right on the brink of tears.

“Honestly,” Raven said furiously, and went blue.

Nina stopped panicking and stared, fascinated. So did the rest of the street. Charles heard the tell-tale click of photos being covertly snapped and sent a surge of deep gratitude to Raven, who scowled at him some more. “Let’s go, then,” she muttered, and they started down the pavement. As the first corner, she transformed back to blonde anonymity.

“You’re blue!” Nina exclaimed loudly.

“Gosh, really,” Raven said, in Charles’ voice. Nina giggled.

“Do it again!” she said.

“It’s not a party trick,” Raven said, as if she had not spent her teenage years seducing boys by turning into their mirror images. It still astonished Charles how effective this strategy had been. When Nina made sad noises, Raven rolled her eyes, shook her head and turned her hair red. Nina clapped excitedly.

“Are you a friend of Papa’s too?” she asked, back into the zone of blithe reassurance. “Like Mr Charles?”

Raven looked at her sideways. “I’m Mr Charles’ sister.”

“I want a sister,” Nina announced.

This time Raven looked at Charles sideways. “What about a brother?”

Nina wrinkled her nose. “Sister,” she said.

“You and me both, kid,” Raven muttered. “Luck of the draw.”

_Ouch,_ Charles protested.

_Where are we going and how is this not what it looks like?_ Raven retorted.  _Because what it_ looks _like is that you’re already ordering your World’s Best Stepfather mug._

Having it stated so baldly hurt so much Charles could not quite see straight for a minute. He swerved stupidly and had to correct himself. “Well, it’s not like that,” he said, out loud – he did not trust himself to convey that as a thought. Raven looked at him sharply and was quiet for a long time.

They found a cafe and plied Nina with frozen yoghurt. She chattered happily about the movie she had just seen while Charles and Raven avoided each other’s eyes.

_How did you find me?_ Charles asked eventually.

_Caved in and bullied Az,_ Raven admitted.  _How come you didn’t hear me coming?_

_I was busy._ Charles was still blocking Erik from Emma’s inquisitive probes, but he was no longer in tune with his and Pietro’s thoughts; it was too much for even him to juggle, particularly with Erik’s wildly see-sawing emotions thrown into the equation. He wanted to be there in the room, though. As it was, he just had to trust that Erik could cope. He was…not used to doing that.

Raven gave herself webbed fingers, making Nina squeal joyfully.  _Why do you have his kid? This isn’t your problem, Charles._

_I know. But I want it to be._

_Fuck_ , Raven said.

_That’s about right,_ Charles agreed. He was about to say more when a spike in Erik’s emotional state drew all of his attention. For a  moment , he could not see where the problem was – Pietro was in the middle of explaining something about his mutation, which Erik had to like – but then he saw, through Erik’s eyes, who had just entered the room.

“Oh, please no,” he breathed.

“Now what?” Raven demanded.

Charles looked at her frantically. “Shaw.”

*

Erik’s first and only warning was the way Emma’s hand clenched around her coffee cup; like she badly wanted to throw it. Then he noticed the distinctive metallic signature of a telepath blocker,  an expensive paranoia that was rare enough outside of a court room or press conference to set Erik immediately on edge. Not that everyone who wore one was Sebastian Shaw, but… 

It was Sebastian Shaw.

“I don’t recall sending you an invitation, sugar,” Emma said, dripping venom.

“My dear, I really don’t blame you. What a scoop,” Shaw replied, and his cufflinks dripped molten onto the rug. He turned his easy, amused smile on Erik. “And what a run down memory lane! It’s been too long, Erik.”

“What’s going on?” Pietro wanted to know, eyeing Shaw doubtfully. “Who are you?”

Shaw held out his hand. Without being aware of moving, Erik stepped between them. “You are not going to touch him,” he said viciously. “We’re leaving now.”

“That’s really up to young Mr Maximoff here,” Shaw said, completely unperturbed, as he had always been. As if Erik’s rage could be as effortlessly contained by him as any other source of power, compressed and repurposed in Shaw’s service. Disregarding Emma’s freezing disapproval, Shaw sank comfortably onto one of the couches.

“A pleasure to meet you at last,” he continued to Pietro, exuding more paternal warmth than Erik had in the hour he had been here. “Thank God for the grapevine in this industry! Emma wanted to keep her discovery all to herself, but I’ve been around the block long enough to know the next big thing when I see it. My staff have been hooked on your videos all night. He calls himself Quicksilver on Youtube,” Shaw added as an aside to Erik, as if it was obvious Erik would not already know. Erik had not known. “Shaw Records is looking for a new face in our winter line-up, and I know you must have a queue of offers, but I think we could have a lot to talk about. What do you say?”

Pietro looked floored. Erik had been like that once, swept off his feet by brilliant mirages.

_Erik, hold on,_ Charles gasped into his mind.  _He wants to make a scene, you know he does, he wants to get a story out of this to use against you, but you can’t…_

_Don’t tell me what I can’t do, Charles._

_I am telling you to listen to me,_ Charles snapped.  _It’s about bloody time, don’t you think?_

“Poaching already, Sebastian?” Emma took a measured sip of coffee. Her eyes were remote; Erik was willing to bet she had issued a dozen commands all over the building by now, moving into damage control.

Shaw grinned. He had never looked at Raven or Azazel like that; just Emma, and Erik. “Don’t think I don’t know about your reunion plans, my dear. Erik here was a star in his day, but what the public really want is a new face.”

“My face,” Pietro said thoughtfully. “Huh. You’ve seen my videos?”

“Every single one,” Shaw promised. “The talent is obviously genetic, I’m sure Erik agrees.”

“Like you’d know a damn thing about talent except how to exploit it,” Erik hissed. He knew he was doing himself no favours. No one liked the embittered accuser, and they usually didn’t believe him either. They certainly hadn’t last time.

But he had stood in Charles’ kitchen and told him he was sorry. _I am truly, utterly sorry._ Wasn’t it about bloody time?

“Come on, Pietro,” Shaw said, all American smile, all teeth. “What do you say?”

“Dude,” Pietro said, “I literally just met my dad, can you give us some space? ‘Cause the hard sell thing is kind of weird.”

Shaw’s smile remained in place. “An offer like this doesn’t come twice.”

“If you’d seen all my videos, you’d know about the one where I trash Shaw Records for exploitative business practices,” Pietro told him. “Like, thanks and all. Bye.”

Erik barked out a laugh with a savagery approaching hysteria. Emma put her hand over her mouth. Outside the office, a phone was ringing shrilly without being answered, as if everyone was frozen out there, waiting for whatever was going to happen, to happen.

Shaw laughed too, a low avuncular chuckle. “I can ruin your name,” he said, and it wasn’t clear who he was talking to any more. Probably all three of them. “I can destroy you.”

“ _Can_ you?” Emma purred. “You want to dig dirt, sugar, you’ll need to get a new shovel, because I’ve got a whole grave’s worth on you. I know how you bought Riptide Co. I heard all about what you got up to at the Hellfire Club.”

Shaw’s confidence did not visibly waver, except for the slight flicker of his eyes. “Yes, Emma dear, you have been a proficient collector of nasty little rumours. Every lady needs her hobby.”

“More than rumours,” Emma said. Her smile said _I own you._ “I talked to Darwin. Turns out your old PA has all kinds of things to say about you now he’s not in the industry. Or the country. Do you remember sending that text threatening to…what was it? Burn him to ashes? That’s a death threat, and he kept it.”

The flicker again. Shaw stood up. “Oh, be careful, Emma,” he said softly.

“Seventeen years too late to tell me that,” Emma replied, equally quiet, equally brutal.

It was a stupid thing to hit her, but Shaw had done as he pleased for such a very long time, and it was not the first time he had hit someone for disagreeing with him. His hand snapped out, and just as quickly was snapped back for him, his watch constricting around his wrist. It would not take Erik a lot of effort to cut off the hand completely. Shaw, with his mutation, might be able to grow a new one; Erik would very much like to find out.

_I am truly, utterly sorry._ He didn’t find out.

“Now I have attempted assault on the list,” Emma drawled. “Are you going to make it longer?”

“You will hear from my lawyer within the hour,” Shaw said curtly. “If you think of spreading such wild accusations…” He paused, as the double meaning of saying that to a telepath evidently struck him. “If you want a war with me, Emma, that’s what you will have.”

He strode out. Erik was still vibrating with rage, but it was a lower frequency now; he could breathe through it.

“Whoa,” Pietro said tentatively. “That was intense. Should I come back another time?”

“Welcome to the Brotherhood,” Emma said, taking another delicate sip of her latte.

“The band is not back together,” Erik interrupted sharply.

“Whatever you say, darling,” Emma said. “Shoo. I have a lot of blackmail to handle.”

Erik narrowed his eyes at her. “Is this what all that reunion palaver was actually about? You wanted to push Shaw’s hand?”

“We made good music, Erik.” Emma shrugged. “The offer’s open.”

Erik rolled the word ‘no’ around his mouth for a while, but did not quite say it. “I’m not staying here any longer, your security is useless,” he said finally. He paused again and said to Pietro, “Do you want to come with me?”

Pietro grinned. “Tell me where we’re going and I’ll book us a table right now.”

He ran loops around Erik all the way to the elevator, like an overexcited puppy let off its leash. Erik did not know what to do with him. He would have to figure that out. The elevator doors opened with a discreet ‘ping’ and Erik was left staring for the third time today when he saw the tableau inside: Charles, Nina and Raven.

Pietro gaped. “Holy shit, you’re Mystique.”

“Oh God, you’re the other kid,” Raven said, looking cornered.

Charles looked at Erik, his eyes so warm and blue, and held out his hand; Erik took it and held too tight. Pietro made a choked noise as he figured out who Charles was. Nina bounced off Charles’ lap and into Erik’s legs, and he scooped her up with his free arm. “You’re not lost!” she yelled in his ear.

“You found me, didn’t you?” he said, holding her rather too tight as well.

His eye caught Raven’s; she glared. Under other circumstances, he was sure she would have punched him, but with an audience of her brother and both Erik’s children, the resentment was an unwieldy thing that had to be pushed to the back of the line of revelations.

“We’d have been here sooner,” Charles said, “but security didn’t like the look of us.”

“Of course, they stopped _you_ ,” Erik bit out.

“Not for very long,” Charles murmured. “I really ought to apologise to them on our way out.”

Raven rolled her eyes. She stabbed the button for the ground floor. “Here’s a thought, Charles, let’s get out of the building first.”

Erik held onto Charles all the way down.

*

_Four months later_

The headlines of Shaw vs Frost were still going strong when Nina’s birthday rolled around. Erik’s apartment was periodically besieged by reporters, but he had honed his skills at scaring them off, and whenever it got too much he retreated to Charles’ house for a little much needed serenity. Nina liked the garden and Erik liked the coffee maker and Charles very much liked having them.

The party was a milestone in three ways. First, and most importantly, Nina Edie Lehnsherr was four years old. She had cut her Peppa Pig cake and strewed the apartment with many shades of shredded wrapping paper and was now sitting on the rug with pink icing around her mouth. Azazel sat cross-legged across from her, gravely pouring pretend tea into plastic champagne glasses. Emma’s influence was already being felt.

The second milestone was subtler. This party was the first occasion that Charles and Erik had celebrated as a couple – the first time they had acknowledged, to friends and family, that this was an official relationship. “What was it before?” Raven had demanded. “Friends with caveats,” Charles had said, and Raven had actually cracked a very small smile. Baby steps.

Magda had returned from Poland five weeks ago, and Charles had met her three times since. Each was a nerve-wracking experience for Charles, laced with unbecoming jealousy and a conflicting but urgent need for her approval, whereas she…just wasn’t all that interested. She was mildly happy that Erik was moving on and mildly concerned that he’d picked his old flame to move on with, and completely ready for inflict serious bodily harm on the pair of them if there was even the suggestion that their personal drama might upset Nina. She was currently talking to Pietro, who was even more on eggshells around her than Charles and doing constant little stunts to win her approval, like zipping into the kitchen to refill her wineglass and encouraging her to throw things at him to see if he could dodge them (she had gently refused to play this game). Magda seemed more confused by him than anything, but she was willing to let him flit around in her orbit.

The third milestone was a piece of music buff trivia: this was the first time in over ten years that every member of the Brotherhood had occupied the same room at the same time. The atmosphere was admittedly a bit tense. Raven had very nearly refused to come at all. As it was, she had given Nina an enormous toy crocodile that walked around on stubby animatronic legs and snapped its teeth if you pulled its tail. Erik’s look of horror and Nina’s scream of joy had made attending this event worthwhile for her. She was currently sharing unflattering anecdotes about the other band members with Angel, who was laughing uproariously. Angel had taken a while to warm up to Charles, as protective in her way of Erik as Raven was of Charles, but she had hit it off with his sister immediately.

Raven was being very careful with Azazel, who was returning the favour, and avoiding Emma as much as possible. High on a recent cascade of accusations that were now convicting Shaw in the court of public opinion, Emma was today glittering with restless energy, her fingertips turned to diamond, the better to tap irritatingly on the rim of her glass.

And Erik…Charles’ eyes fell on him. Erik had brought out his guitar at Nina’s request and was leaning against the couch to tune it. In his workroom were a pile of draft blueprints that he had not exactly told Charles about yet. He was designing what he called the perfect wheelchair-accessible house, apparently because he was interested in the theory. He had not conceded yet that he would also be living in this house when it was eventually built; Charles was politely not mentioning that Erik was, in fact, planning to build him a house, while inwardly exulting.

“He’s still really bad news,” Raven said quietly. “You do know that, right?”

“The news is very good these days,” Charles informed her. _I know who he is, Raven._

Erik had started to sing, a soft growl beneath the sound of the guitar. Nina’s favourite song. The times, they were a-changin’.

“This doesn’t mean the band is back together, Charles,” Raven said warningly.

“No,” Charles agreed easily. “But we’re here.”

The music would catch up in the end.


End file.
